I don't have the game, so that's all theory here. The idea is to survive the early turns with bounce, burn and 3 toughness blockers. The instants should also be able to clear the path for Jhessian Thief. Scry helps you find the tools you need and smooth out the amount of land you draw.

Then you wanna get Sphinx's Tutelage out and start drawing cards. The card draw mills and restocks your supply of instants to answer threats.

I chose Artificer's Epiphany over Inspiration to keep the curve as low as possible. I expect the 3 Alchemist's Vial to enable the full effect mid to late game. If they don't show up that's not a big deal either, Artificer's Epiphany still triggers the mill twice and lets you keep the better card. With that much draw and scry I just prefer being able to play multiple cheap spells over the solid but kinda expensive Inspiration.

I'm looking forward to playing this. It looks fun and might even be competitive. If you have the cards to test it, please let me know how it performs.

Last edited by Gegliosch on Fri Jul 10, 2015 10:47 pm, edited 1 time in total.

So, this isn't my deck. I just stole someone else's net deck and tested it. I've played 7 matches with this deck, and won 5 of them. That's not bad. The only actual losses came playing against RDW that drew the perfect starting hands.

The deck performs surprisingly well, there are a ton of answers, and it can survive early aggro to pull out a devastating mill win. Thopter Engineer is an unexpectedly amazing card, turning on all artifacts the moment she hits. It makes it worth it to wait a turn to drop the Runed Servitor, so we can swing unexpectedly. Jhessian Thief has been underwhelming at best, and a useless blocker at best. She might be better served replaced with additional draw, or burn.

Did you win with mill or damage? That was my main concern when I made this deck, because if it wins faster by attacking, it would be better to drop the mill and strengthen the artifact aspect.

That's why I ended up with an Izzet mill with more of a spell and etb focus. Jhessian Thief should be better there, but I'll have to see if the chump Thopters are needed to buy time.

Btw, I think Jhessian Thief is a much better blocker than you give her credit for. Remember that instants buff her up. So if they swing and you can eliminate one or two attackers with instants and buff her to a 2/4 or 3/5 that's pretty awesome for a 3-drop. They always have to factor that in when they swing and may even need to keep blockers back to prevent her card draw. Haven't seen her in action, but I think she's pretty good value.

I would empty my hand first if that's possible. You don't wanna throw 2-3 useful cards away and then have the Dragon removed. With this deck I'd be very trigger happy with early removal and restock later with draw. This isn't a real control deck, it's trying to slow the opponent down as much as possible and mill him fast enough. It should play a little like the old Dream Puppets speed mill, with a lot less mill but also better ways to delay your opponent. It's still a race though: He will eventually break through your defense and you need to mill him before he does. That's also the reason why I chose Fiery Impulse over Twin Bolt here. Twin Bolt has very good 2 for 1 potential but Fiery Impulse is much easier to squeeze in without wasting a whole turn. I need to see the deck in action to make a final decision, but I think tempo is key here.

Btw: Don't be scared to take some early hits if it means you can get a better setup for future plays. That's one of the mistakes that almost cost Archernick the game when he tested the deck. Stuff like that may cost you whole turns later on and that's a big deal in a race situation.

Did you win with mill or damage? That was my main concern when I made this deck, because if it wins faster by attacking, it would be better to drop the mill and strengthen the artifact aspect.

That's why I ended up with an Izzet mill with more of a spell and etb focus. Jhessian Thief should be better there, but I'll have to see if the chump Thopters are needed to buy time.

Btw, I think Jhessian Thief is a much better blocker than you give her credit for. Remember that instants buff her up. So if they swing and you can eliminate one or two attackers with instants and buff her to a 2/4 or 3/5 that's pretty awesome for a 3-drop. They always have to factor that in when they swing and may even need to keep blockers back to prevent her card draw. Haven't seen her in action, but I think she's pretty good value.

Almost always mill. Once Tutelage hits, and almost everything triggers it.

I'll try the Thief again, though.

I mostly keep generating Thopter tokens, and then using them as chump blockers and to draw.

This is intended as a prowess deck, I managed to work a bit of artifact synergy in here too. The basic idea is to drop a prowess creature on the board and then make combat math impossible for your opponent with all your buffs.

Perilous myr and twinbolt hold down the fort against aggro. Anchor to the Aether and exquisite firecraft should keep larger creatures on their toes. Artificer's intuition, alchemist's vial, jhessian thief and thopter spy network keep your hand full so you can keep on pumping your dudes. Hydrolash is intended to help maintain tempo vs rush decks - if they try to alpha strike you can pop this in response.

I held off on countermagic because I wanted instants that I can use during my combat phase. I thought about including some unblockable enablers (e.g. whirler rogue) in order to make Jhessian Thief better but couldn't find the room. Also not sure about twin bolt vs. fiery outburst - I don't have room for both and the idea isn't to kill all the little creatures. I use perilous myr instead because of the 2 for 1 potential and synergy with thopter network / artificer's intuition.

Thoughts? Should I include the unblockable basic land in here for synergy?Edit - willbreaker would be pretty awesome here with all the targetting effects, but I don't like that her control ability only lasts as long as she is alive. With a 2/3 body I just don't think she is worth it.

The typos are hurting my eyes when I mouse over the cards, especially the one that's just the wrong card.

Thopter Spy Network is a bit underwhelming when I actually see it in action, and I wouldn't really include it in a deck unless you already had a bunch of Thopter generators. It doesn't make a token unless you control an artifact, and your Myrs are extremely fragile. That means you won't be able to use your vial to push your thief or abbot through, and seems a bit clunky with what you're trying to do. You only draw the card off of the network when an artifact creature deals combat damage, so until you start making your thopter tokens that's only your Myr. If the Myr gets blocked at sends his shock to the face it won't work, and a prowess creature getting in there won't work. Even when it works, it's no Bident of Thassa, you only get to draw one card regardless of how many artifacts deal combat damage. If you do go to the trouble of getting the network going, it makes a single thopter per turn, which is nice, but not fantastic. A Whirler Rogue or Chandra's Parents create 2 Thopters and a 2/2 immediately and you can use their activated abilities to help push your prowess guys through. You would need your Thopter Network active for around 4 turns and for your Thopters to be able to attack for it to be better than an alternative four drop.

It should work that way. However I don't think any of the willbreaker combos make any serious deck. If we had a couple of good land search effects I think it would work well with rogue's passage, but right now I don't think there's anything in the pool it's particularly great with.

My problem with willbreaker isn't mainly the lack of good targeting effects. Twin bolt and alchemist's vial are good enough, you don't have to steal your opponent's entire board. My problem is that she is a 2/3 and control reverts if she dies. White aggro won't be able to eliminate her but won't have great mind control targets either.

I haven't seen any full on artifact synergy lists. This ends up being kind of a midrange deck. I wanted to pack in more countermagic, but I ended up running so many 4 drops that I just decided 4 CMC would be the top of my curve.

This deck is loaded with a heavy anti-aggro package because I want to buy time to deploy my 4 drops, since they do not generate huge board advantage immediately. Basically you get artifacts in play directly or via chandra's parents / whirler rogue. Make them big via the Chief. Turn them into burn via Girapur Aether Grid. Equip them with sigil of valor and then make them unblockable with Whirler Rogue. Turn them into burn via Chandra's parents or reclusive artificer. Turn them into draw with thopter spy network.

Vs. big creature decks you should be able to generate enough damage via the numerous burn options, claustrophobia is a backup, guardians of meletis can block nearly any non-flying creature in the game. This deck will probably fold to any sort of board wipe but I do not want to leave 3 mana open until I have 7 mana (at which point an opponent could just pay 3 for languish). Too bad we do not have negate. This deck is kinda slow and requires a lot of board commitment, if wipe-happy control decks are a thing I may have to reconsider.

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